BPM Core | Withings smart health monitor

In the best of all worlds, connected health unclogs emergencies, makes practitioners’ phones ring less and allows objective, precise and detailed monitoring of patients from a distance. Poorly executed, on the other hand, it can give rise to the opposite situation: panicked clients, false readings that have been misinterpreted and measures that do not meet doctors’ expectations. In these two opposing worlds, where is the BPM Core, the last connected object sold by Withings and offering a blood pressure monitor, an electrocardiograph and an electronic stethoscope? Verdict after ten days of testing.

PERFECT EXECUTION

From the outset, we can recognize that Withings did things right. The BPM Core, designed with cardiologists and certified medical device, is an object that does not leave much room for error in use – which is the key to a good survey and one of the frequent criticisms addressed to self-diagnosis. Like blood pressure monitors that are used in the doctor’s office, it wraps around the left arm in one direction (metal tip down). The design serves a function here: if you put the tip up, you can neither press the button to start the measurement, nor comfortably perform the ECG.

In addition, the application is a model of its kind when it comes to taking charge of a user. The first use is accompanied by several screens which trigger the functions of the BPM Core by explaining them, one after the other. It is during this initial configuration that the user will create their account and profile, filling in medical data (weight, height, age, etc.). After this configuration, you can use the BPM Core without a smartphone and only consult your statements when you want. The complete reading takes about 2 minutes 30 seconds and the battery is surprisingly good: in 10 days with several tests per day, the BPM has still not asked us to recharge it.

On your smartphone, you can view the results and Withings provides very clear information on the methodology, the measurements and their interpretation. The screens are very educational and allow you to understand unambiguously what is happening in our body. The follow-up is not only entered in the form of data: the ECG for example offers a video of the tracing, which allows a doctor to see exactly what happened during the survey. Sharing options allow you to send an email to a healthcare professional containing a report in test format, but also spreadsheets in .csv and Excel format.

The only indented point on these measurements: the electronic stethoscope. The object, supposed to detect valvular heart disease, never succeeded in making a sure diagnosis, even after the minimum number of readings reached. Good point: he did not claim to have been able to do so and simply stated that the information he had was inconclusive. Honest, for a machine.

All that said, and in view of the medical guarantees provided by Withings, we can only advise too much a person who needs follow-up to move towards this complete and effective solution, which she could even offer to her doctor. in addition to medical visits.

THE BAD POINT

On the other hand, we clearly ask ourselves the question of the need for such a device for a person who has no known tension problem or heart problem – and if he has doubts, it is better to make an appointment medical before investing $249 in a connected object that will best complement. This question arises because the BPM Core has been mistaken at least once.

But could the BPM Core have misinterpreted something else? “Then we see a part where the P wave is missing. Fibrillation is an undulation of the baseline and an irregularity in the rhythm, not just the absence of the wave. The algorithm may have smoothed a bit too much, and the wave may have been loose … it was erased. We can see on the course that the wave is not very wide. It is a technical anomaly, not a physiological one. And finally you have a passage where the baseline seems to undulate, but the aspect is clearly that of an artifact (we see the normal P wave just after, it has a different aspect from this undulation, and normal). Something is disturbing the recording; typically it can be a movement. Bingo, doctor: I moved my leg twice quickly to avoid my rabbit during this survey, a detail that I did not see fit to note. Numerous subsequent readings have shown no signs of this fibrillation.

This is all the concern of this health tech a bit too sure of herself. The application never suggested that the reading could be bad and that it would be good to redo it. She immediately invited me to waste time on a doctor, who already has little. If we multiply this by the potential number of users of these objects, the already saturated standards are likely to explode. Not to mention the fact that we are on a high-end medical object – we dare not even imagine what results can give an entry-level blood pressure monitor sold in supermarkets.

Therefore, our opinion is mixed: if such a device facilitates your daily life, saves you unnecessary medical visits and is a help for your doctor, then the BPM Core will be your ideal companion. On the other hand, if you are in good health or if you have no problem related to the skills of the BPM Core, you do not really have any reason to buy one, no matter what the injunctions of Withings which touts better screening on the site. If you have the slightest doubt, nothing will be worth a first consultation, at least to make a point … and maybe then buy a BPM Core to follow the evolution of a pathology.